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Topic: Bioshock Infinite - Spoilers (Read 2127 times)

Just finished the game after two consecutive evenings of binge playing.

I'll give a non-spoiler summary of my experience before we dive into dissecting the plot.

I was initially struck by how similar the beginning of the game was to the first Bioshock, but it quickly became apparent this was very much intentional. The game manages to look even more impressive than the first game, and basically all the environments are far, far bigger. Some niggling annoyances which tended to bog Bioshock 1 down like collectible health kits and the research camera have been removed.

I understand the replenishing energy shield and two weapon limit have been criticised pretty extensively.The energy shield I think is reasonable given some of the enemies you face, especially in the later stages of the game, do a great deal of damage, which in the absence of some sort of regenerating buffer would necessitate the player having a much large health bar, which might detract from the urgency and pace of the large gunfights.The two weapon limit didn't grate on me as much as I thought it might, and it does genuinely seem to force you to try out weapons you otherwise wouldn't, though I expect everyone will gravitate to their favourites (Hand Cannon). Overall the weapons are nicely varied and seem to all have a niche depending on the situation.

On the flip side of the two gun limit, there is now no restriction on the number of 'powers' (Vigours, as they are now called) you can hold at once, and you can switch between any of them freely. These are otherwise pretty much the same as the ones from the original game. With the exception that killing someone with electricity now causes their heads to explode with a satisfyingly loud 'bang!'.

The other touted features of the game play out surprisingly well. The Skyrails feel very natural to use and definitely give you a nice edge during the fights. I also particularly enjoyed raining death on the enemies below from one with the explosive volley gun. Your companion for a lot of the game, Elizabeth, is also a nice addition. Basically Alyx from half-life with superpowers and a non-silent protagonist to work against. My only criticisms would be that she throws money at you a bit too often and also has a tendency to yawn at totally inappropriate times.

The game looks REALLY nice. The environments are very good looking and as mentioned in the off-topic topic I really love the art direction this game has.

The gameplay is pretty good too, and although I never played Bioshock 2 I can say this game is a marked improvement over Bioshock 1.

Some of the enemies can get a bit ridiculous- in particular, the handy men I've always found to be tedious as all hell to beat.

I've never really liked the mouse sensitivity in Bioshock and it hasn't changed that much. It seems like the difference between levels 1 and two is the difference between just a bit too slow and blazing fast.

I really liked the game's story as well, and the end is a hell of a mindscrewing twist for me personally, although I'm never good at catching foreshadowing so take that with a grain of salt.

Yeah the Handymen I wasn't so keen on since there really doesn't seem to be much strategy to them except to whale on them for way too long. None of the plasmids vigours actually seem to have any affect on them, except for shock jockey which seems to make them pause for a very short amount of time.

As for the ending. I'd had hunches about a few aspects of it but hadn't been able to piece it all together. I had at various times suspected that Dewitt and Comstock may in some way be the same person, and I'd also independently to that thought that maybe Elizabeth was Dewitt's daughter. But I'd sort of brushed both theories off until the end. Unless some of the voxophones I missed were very explicit I don't think there was ever enough information available to guess the end twist 100% correctly

Yeah, speaking of which I think I only found like twenty-one or so of the voxophones, and not more than half of the sightseer stuff. I'll probably go back at some point and do another playthrough to scour all of them... or just watch the inevitable YouTube compilation of all of them. Either way, I just really like optional lore like that in a game.

Gameplay wise I felt like I was playing Bioshock 2 so I was pretty underwhelmed. I just stuck to Crow/Sniper since the stun instakill combo was so nice.

Lutece mentions how her 'brother' and her are "a chromosome apart" in one of her voxophones and that's the tip to them being the same person. Their characters were pretty damn cool additions, had no idea they were in the game.

The dad giveaway I thought was totally spoiled when Comstock taunts you saying "And see just what kind of father he is" and the finger thing.

The end end was pretty cool though, loved the Bioshock cameo, loved how it ends like it starts, and his revelation at the end is pretty awesome.

Glad I got it on sale though since I felt the game was too short and theme-parkish to warrant $60. Bitchin story though they still got that on lock. I really, REALLY like to believe the events of Bioshock are 'another ocean' of Bioshock Infinite, and DeWitt is Andrew Ryan.

Wish it went more into the politics/industry of the town like Bioshock tended to, seems like things like how Vigors came to be and the implications of those weren't even touched upon and that was rather disappointing. They could have added some depth and length to the game with that.

There's a throwaway line in one of Fink's Voxophones about observing a biologist through one of the rifts. The implication being thats the origin of vigours.

The real reason obviously is that they just wanted to have plasmids in the game again, never mind they don't fit into the world and hardly anyone seems to use them.

Seems like they could have pretty easily provided a more satisfying explanation that they're a product of some weird dimensional phasing tech and Comstock was calling them 'miracles' and giving them to his most trusted followers.

I read that earlier versions of the game were a lot more similar to the first game and a lot more horror-centric. There were vigour junkie enemies who had been mutated and gone mad, much like splicers, and there were also a lot more enemies related to dimension shifting, including people who had merged with several alternate versions of themselves, and various weird monsters approached from a similar thematic angle to the ghost you have to fight three ****ing times

Yeah I figured they would at least expand on it beyond Fink mentioning he saw BigDaddies and Tennenbaum in a tear. Though I guess at the end of the day it didn't really matter since the story was about Dewitt/Liz/Comstock/Lutece.

Still, seems like they sure did rush out Fink and Fitzroy, who were some of the shallowest characters so w/e.

They did have the 'vigour junkie' enemies be somewhat mutated and insane, though there was no as to why they went bonkers and you could chug 8 and only suffer hand-effects. Not to mention there were what, two? Fire and crow? Lightning is a boss, the rest of the tonics don't even make an appearance on an enemy that I remember. I would have preferred them to explore a darker Columbia, though.

Handymen fights were pretty weak sauce too, Bioshock at least had Rosies and Drills. I felt each handyman was the same monkey different suit.